In a story that reads like a Dan Brown novel — except it’s real — historian Ivan Malára made a stunning discovery at the National Central Library in Florence. While examining seven 16th-century editions of Ptolemy’s Almagest, the ancient world’s most influential astronomical text, Malára noticed something unusual: someone had copied Psalm 145 onto a blank page in handwriting that strongly resembled that of a very famous Tuscan astronomer.
Further investigation revealed that the book contained extensive annotations by none other than Galileo Galilei himself. The discovery, described in a paper currently under peer review at the Journal for the History of Astronomy, promises to shed new light on how Galileo engaged with the geocentric model he would eventually help overthrow. It is a remarkable find — a direct window into the mind of one of history’s greatest scientists, hidden in plain sight for half a millennium.
